Moth to the Flame

by Joy Dettman

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘The image of you.’

  ‘I know that. I mean as a bloke.’

  Jenny lit a cigarette, attempting to remember what he’d been like to that mixed-up kid who had run away to Melbourne. Only one word came to her tongue. ‘Kind.’

  ‘I bet the people he robbed didn’t think so.’

  ‘He was kind to me. I didn’t know what he did, love. He’d leave me some place for a few days and come back with his pockets full of money and his arms full of parcels, and he’d sit smiling while I opened them.’ She drew on the cigarette. ‘I was only a kid, unworldly; one minute sitting in the schoolroom, the next having Margot, the next living with a rich man who drove cars. I didn’t do much thinking, not at first. Having Margot messed up my head for a lot of years.’

  ‘Did he know you were having me?’

  ‘He called you King George the first.’

  ‘That’s why you saddled me with Georgina?’

  ‘I told Granny to register you as Georgie. She turned it into Georgina.’

  ‘Did you love him?’

  ‘I didn’t know what love of a man was, not then. He was kind, he was playful at times. I’d look at him sometimes and he’d look so old and worried, then the next day he’d be laughing and he’d look sixteen. I trusted him, love. Trust means a lot to me.’

  ‘Did you ever trust Ray again — after Armadale?’

  ‘Tonight isn’t the night to be remembering the bad things. He was as messed up as me, and I could have done more for him.’

  ‘You looked after Donny for him.’

  Silence then. A minute, two minutes, they sat looking at the flue, growing red with heat.

  ‘How did you . . . I mean, if you were so unworldly, how did you end up having Margot so young, and with the Macdonald twins of all people?’

  ‘It’s old history, and better buried.’

  Just the drips then, the splatter-splat, the pling-pling-pling; just the waves of rain on that low tin roof.

  ‘I thought I’d be burying you when Lenny drove up to the shop to get me,’ Georgie said. ‘Charlie and I were outside. When the cop took off with his wailing siren, we knew there must have been an accident. I thought Lila Roberts had hit a truck.’ She shrugged. ‘When Lenny said mill accident, the wave of relief almost knocked me over.’

  ‘If I lost you, I’d curl up in a corner and die,’ Jenny said.

  ‘I look awful when I blush, but ditto.’

  Jenny lit another cigarette. ‘I went to a ball in a moth-eaten ballgown I’d dyed the prettiest shade of blue, and I thought I was Cinderella. I sang with the band, and dreamed of being famous and never wearing anything other than beautiful gowns for the rest of my life. Then I went out to the lav. Amber followed me, and ripped my skirt away from the bodice. I told her a few home truths, told Norman a few. He locked me in my bedroom so I climbed out the window. I was going to come down to Granny, but I was too scared to walk through the bush in the dark so I sat on the oval fence, listening to the music. The twins crept up on me. I should have screamed, but I wasn’t scared of them; told them they stank like polecats and to go home and soak their heads in a phenol bath. They raped me on old Cecelia Duckworth’s tombstone, one after the other.’

  Georgie watched her, waiting for more. Jenny said no more.

  ‘Does Margot know?’

  ‘Not unless Maisy told her, and she wouldn’t.’

  ‘Were they jailed?’

  ‘They were for a while, but later. I didn’t tell anyone — not at the time. I came down here and wiped it out of my head, went to school, sat for a scholarship to a boarding school in Bendigo.

  ‘I thought Margot was wind when she started moving, then Dora Palmer told me her sister, Irene, was having a baby and how she’d got that way. That’s when I told Granny. She told Norman. I thought he’d come down and make it all right. He didn’t come near me.’ Cigarette burning away, Jenny crushed the butt. ‘He and Amber got together with Maisy and George and decided to marry me off to one of the twins, for my good name’s sake. Once Margot was out of me and I was still alive, I said I would. Anything I asked for, Norman gave me. He wanted to make the problem go away.

  ‘So it did. I stowed away in the good’s van to Melbourne.’

  ‘And had me?’

  ‘Laurie ran me down in his car — in someone’s car. I sprained my ankle. He drove me around to my penfriend’s house, but she’d moved, so he took me to his house — which wasn’t his house, though I didn’t know it. I told him I was nineteen and he gave me a job house-cleaning. For three weeks that’s all I did. If I hadn’t told him I was nineteen, he wouldn’t have touched me. If they hadn’t tried to marry me off, I would have stayed here and signed Margot away. I regret a lot in my life, but never Laurie and never having you. If things had worked out differently, I might have had time to grow up enough to love him.’

  ‘Did you ever love Ray?’

  ‘Don’t make me answer that.’

  ‘Are you going to sing at his funeral?’

  ‘He wouldn’t expect me to.’

  ‘You’re better than half of the singers you hear on the wireless.’

  ‘I was on the wireless a few months before the ball. I won five pounds, back when five pounds was a fortune. I’ve still got it too.’

  ‘In the bank?’

  ‘Behind the photograph of me and Jimmy and Jim. When we were living on pancakes in Melbourne I almost spent it.’ She removed Ray’s friendship ring, then her wedding ring and offered the latter. ‘It’s not Ray’s. I spent his on food. Does that answer your question?’

  Georgie took the ring. The engraving was still unworn. Jen and Jim, 1942.

  ‘Jim Hooper’s?’

  ‘Ray never knew,’ Jenny said. ‘Tonight I’m thanking God he never knew it — and this isn’t doing my head one scrap of good. Get the cards out, love.’

  Elsie and Harry came over at eight. They found them sitting at the table playing Canasta, never a good game for two. Georgie dealt them in. That night had to be filled, and is there a better night-filler than a game of cards?

  ‘I’ll have a look at that chimney in the morning,’ Harry said. ‘If it stops raining.’

  ‘We’ll have more than drips inside in a day or two,’ Jenny said. ‘The ground can’t take up any more water.’

  ‘We won’t go under,’ Harry said.

  ‘Granny made sure of that,’ Jenny said. ‘She used to tell us that the water never made its attack front on, that her front paddocks were higher. It always circled around her land, then, when she took her eye off it, it attacked from the rear like one of Flanagan’s dogs.’

  Too much competition from the thundering rain for conversation; the four players looking up at the buckled ceiling, expecting it to give way.

  ‘Reminds me of the first night I played cards down here, Else,’ Harry said.

  ‘You reckoned Mum’s dripping chimney was better than some of the music on the wireless,’ Elsie said.

  Georgie heard no music in those drips. To her, they sounded like Ray’s stutter. ‘T-t-time to l-l-leave,’ it said. ‘T-t-t-time to g-g-go.’

  ‘I’ll have to get Donny down to Melbourne,’ Jenny said. ‘I can’t manage him without Ray.’

  ‘You’ll keep Raelene?’

  ‘I’m the only mother she’s known.’

  ‘How did she take it?’

  ‘Tomorrow will be soon enough for her to know.’

  Harry spoke of insurance. Jenny lifted a hand, Norman’s sign for ‘enough’. She didn’t want any more blood money on her conscience.

  ‘When are you thinking of taking Donny down?’ Harry asked.

  ‘After the funeral. Ray would want him there. I’ll ring Doctor Frazer and see if the ambulance is likely to be going down to Melbourne.’

  Georgie swept in the cards, shuffled, then dealt another hand. They played Canasta until that day was gone and a new day begun, until the rain eased off enough for Elsie and Harry to make a br
eak for home.

  A DIFFERENT CHURCH

  Less than a week since Gertrude’s funeral, though nothing was the same. Ray’s service would be held at the Catholic church. He’d be buried in the Catholic section of the cemetery.

  A display of black clothing had been unnecessary at Gertrude’s funeral. Grief had been etched into their faces, worn in their eyes that day. Black was necessary for Ray’s funeral, and a hat. Jenny removed the red feather from Gertrude’s merry widow hat. She pressed her old black suit coat, made in Armadale, pressed her black sweater. Like Gertrude, she and Georgie were comfortable in slacks. They owned black slacks. Georgie owned no hat. She found a grey paisley scarf. Heads had to be covered in the Catholic church.

  Margot was the problem. She wanted to wear black for Ray but owned nothing black. You can’t see germs on black.

  ‘No one will see what we’re wearing under our raincoats,’ Jenny reasoned.

  Margot had never been reasonable. ‘My coat’th cream, and I’m not wearing it.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ Georgie said.

  Margot suited herself. She wore Gertrude’s old black coat, the wide-brimmed felt hat Gertrude had worn to town for twenty years, lace-up shoes with Ray’s black socks. She looked ridiculous but she walked off across the paddock.

  They clad Raelene in her rain cape; Donny in Georgie’s old blue raincoat, a foot too long, but he’d be strapped into his wheelchair.

  Davies had paid for the undertaker’s black wagon to pick them up, drive them home. Lenny hauled Donny across the paddock to the car. Davies should have sent a tractor down to get them — the road was in a bad way.

  They got there.

  What was there to say about Ray King, the boy who had walked away from this town before his twelfth birthday and returned as a man? No one knew him. His wife didn’t know him.

  Donny sang his dirge, Georgie bribed him silent with chocolate drops, bribed Raelene to sit still with chocolate drops, wiped chocolate drool, chocolate hands, while the organist played and the priest spoke about a reliable worker, a good husband and father.

  Davies’s mill men carried him outside to the rain. Not many had honoured Ray in life; enough mill men honoured him in death, gave him his last ‘hooray’, the Macdonald twins amongst them.

  No doubt there was water in the six-foot hole they dropped Ray into, but it was done, and the mourners hurried away beneath umbrellas — away to the hotel where Davies was turning on free beer for half an hour, with biscuits and tea for the ladies.

  Widows were expected to put in an appearance. Two or three folk offered Jenny a lift to the hotel. She didn’t feel like a widow.

  ‘Thanks, but I’ll get the kids home,’ she replied to each offer.

  The Macdonald twins left the cemetery, elbow to elbow behind Jenny’s group. Small feet, short legs, narrow backsides, bulky chests, massive shoulders, triangular heads set on those shoulders, wide jaws, pointed bald domes, their father’s eyebrows sheltering pale eyes from the rain.

  They dodged Jenny’s eye, but eyed her daughters: the redhead pushing the wheelchair; Margot walking beside her, her black coat dragging in the mud, the too-large black hat weighing her down — like a kid playing dress-ups.

  Donny’s wheelchair bogged on the far side of the gate. Macka walked left around it to his ute. Bernie was parked to the right. He had to walk by them, or paddle through a lake of brown water. Or give them a hand.

  He didn’t ask. The widow wouldn’t have heard him had he asked. She hadn’t looked at him since the day she’d ground a double-header ice-cream into his ear. He lifted both chair and boy up to the bitumen.

  Georgie thanked him. He nodded and walked on to his ute, parked tail to nose with the undertaker’s black wagon. He opened his door and glanced at Jenny, now waiting beside the mud-covered wagon. No sign of the undertaker’s offsider no doubt hoping the family had gone around to the wake.

  Bernie closed his door. ‘Can I get him home for you?’ he said.

  Georgie dealt with Bernie and his twin at Charlie’s. She sold them cigarettes. Couldn’t tell them apart unless she was close enough to see Macka’s gap, or his false teeth when he bothered to put them in. She eyed Bernie, then his ute tyres, more capable of handling the bog of the forest road than that wagon. Bernie had already proved he could handle Donny.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said.

  There was no argument to be made against common sense. Jenny didn’t argue. She walked down Cemetery Road towards the town. Raelene didn’t want her to walk. She bawled.

  ‘Go with her or get in, Raelene,’ Georgie said. ‘Get in, Margot.’

  Neither one got in. Donny did. Bernie hauled him from his chair as if he was nothing, then tossed the chair up to the loading area. Georgie got in, with Raelene.

  ‘We’re thupposed to go in the undertaker’th car,’ Margot whined.

  ‘Get in the back.’ Georgie said, knowing Margot wouldn’t want to walk two miles, Granny’s hat dripping, muddy coat-tails hobbling her. She scrambled up with the wheelchair and Bernie drove them home.

  Getting Donny out was easier than getting him in, until his feet hit the mud. Gertrude’s yard looked like melted chocolate. He sat down to eat it. Margot jumped down and ran inside, her coattails dragging.

  The beer only free for half an hour, Bernie wasted no time in hauling that lump of a boy out of the mud. He tossed him over his shoulder and followed Margot’s coat-tails.

  It was the first time he’d been inside that house in twenty years. It looked worse than he remembered, which had been bad enough. He dumped his load on the floor and was leaving when the redhead came in with the wheelchair, the dago kid riding it. Stepped back, out of her way. Watched her poke wood into the stove, set three flatirons over the central hotplate. Time had stood still in this place.

  Glanced at the dago kid, who wanted a biscuit and didn’t get one. And she had to be half dago, even if Maisy swore black and blue that Ray King had turned up with her in one of his saddlebags. There was no question as to who that lump of a boy belonged to.

  Then a younger, plumper version of Jessica, his sister, came from behind a curtain, her coat and hat off. He’d seen a good bit of that kid when she was eight or nine, had seen her around since, though not close up. She was his kid — or Macka’s — not that she was a kid. He knew how old she was, knew how old he’d been when he’d made her — or Macka had made her. She had to be nineteen.

  ‘You’re the dead spit of Jessie,’ he said.

  Margot gave him a look that might freeze the devil, then disappeared back behind the curtain.

  He had to get out of here. Time was getting away. He didn’t leave. He watched the redhead pull muddy shoes from the boy’s fat feet, peel off muddy socks, fight the muddy coat off.

  ‘He takes a bit of handling,’ he said.

  His kid replied from behind the curtain. ‘Daddy Ray could handle him. If you’d given him a job when he athked, he wouldn’t be dead now.’

  Bernie swallowed and stepped back to the doorway. Drizzling rain had grown heavy. He remained under cover. Watched the redhead fill a baby’s bottle with green cordial, watched her lie that lump of a boy down, place the bottle into his hands, watched him find his mouth with the teat. That kid had to be eight or ten years old.

  ‘Thanks for your help,’ Georgie said.

  Rain or not, Bernie had been dismissed.

  He walked back to his ute. Its windscreen fogged by its wet load, he opened the corner windows, started the motor, but sat there staring at wet chooks huddling together beneath the walnut tree. How the hell did anyone survive down here?

  They wouldn’t in a day or two. The creek was as high as it had been in ’52, and, according to the midday news, more water was coming down tonight.

  He slipped the gearstick into reverse, turned the ute around and ploughed back up the track; wished he’d taken the redhead’s advice and dropped them off out front of Hall’s when his tyres lost their purchase on the rise up to the road. He backe
d up, slapped the stick into first, took a run at it and kept on going.

  Passed the widow where the road forked, probably sprayed her with mud. She hated his guts. Nothing he could do about that.

  Two fast free beers didn’t quench his thirst, nor erase the sound of that girl’s ‘Daddy Ray’. He hadn’t known she’d called the big, stuttering bastard ‘daddy’. He tossed down another beer.

  I was prepared to do the right thing by her mother. I was at the bloody church choking in my collar and tie. It’s not my fault.

  That tie was choking him today and he wasn’t wearing one.

  The free beer turned off. A few were leaving.

  ‘I’m off,’ Macka said.

  ‘You’ve been off for years, you bastard,’ Bernie replied. He wasn’t leaving. He ordered another beer and paid for it, his thirst unquenchable tonight.

  Daddy bloody stuttering Ray bloody King, he thought. That girl was a Macdonald through and through. Something should have been done about her.

  Sometime after six he drove home to a house full of light and a wireless blaring. George was as deaf as a post. The motor turned off, Bernie sat on, lit a smoke and stared at the house. A roaring fire would be burning in the lounge room, a meal bubbling in a modern kitchen. Warm in there, no leaks in that roof.

  Bloody flatirons, he thought. He hadn’t known that folk still used those things for their intended purpose. Maisy used one as a doorstop.

  ‘Daddy bloody stuttering Ray,’ he muttered while a bloodsucking bat clawed at his throat. He clawed at his throat and stared at a barrowload of wood waiting dry beneath the front veranda, handy to open fire. No open fire down there. No carpet on the floor. No bloody lino on the floor. A saturated wood heap. Mud from arsehole to breakfast time . . .

  Had he not had six or eight beers under his belt, he may not have done what he’d done; loaded that barrow of cut wood into his cabin and driven for a second time out along the forest road. So she’d spit in his eye; so what? Mill widows and their kids were looked after in Woody Creek. He was looking after Daddy Ray’s kids, that’s all, and maybe whatever was choking him would let go after Daddy Ray’s widow spat in his eye.